Witch Hazel Whitewash

As ProfessorRoush looked out his bedroom window two weeks ago, he spied yellow; yellow where it shouldn't be yellow.  In the garden, something was blooming in late fall!  Something that shouldn't have been blooming!  On closer examination, it turned out to be his witch hazel, purchased as Hamamelis × intermedia 'Jelena' and planted in 2008, profusely and vibrantly blooming its overhyped head off.

But, it wasn't, actually.  It wasn't his 'Jelena', because ProfessorRoush has to face the fact that he doesn't have a 'Jelena'.  'Jelena' should bloom in the spring.  'Jelena' should bloom in various shades of red-orange to yellow.  'Jelena' should have better fall foliage color than my obviously mislabeled 'not-Jelena'.  

I'm finally sure that I was sold a proverbial pig-in-a-poke, a witch hazel whitewash, as it were.  I've long suspected it;  the sporadic bloom, seeming to occur in fall or early winter, although sometimes it held off till February.  Plain fall foliage that turns tan and drops fairly quickly, and a slow growth rate.  The discordant fact that no one else seems to be able to grow witch hazel in this area.  Several of my garden visitors have inquired of it, and then proclaimed my green thumb at getting it to grow in these alkaline, dry soils.  Mine never thrived, but it lived, suffered through long summers of drought, and grew a little each year.  And those chrome yellow blooms, which didn't show nearly the length and visibility they were supposed to, in disappointing contrast to rave reports from plantsmen. 

It's now clear that I was sold, at a premium price, the common witchhazel, Hamamelis virginiana, or some variant thereof.  I'm going to have to find a way to live with that, to live with the knowledge of yet another mislabeled imposter in my garden.  I've accumulated a few over the years, wrong-labeled roses I can't identify, cultivars of perennials that were sold as something else.  How often, how curious, that the mislabeled plant lives and thrives while the cherished named cultivars perish.  I'm  suspicious that horticultural stores have a way of growing what is easy and then just responding to consumer demand.  "You want a 'Jelena' Witch Hazel?  Sure, we've got those, just give me a minute to type up a plant tag for these unlabeled shrubs over here."  One wonders, one worries, right up until the plant finally matures and shows its true, completely yellow colors, in the wrong season, no less.  And then one has to live with the imposter, right there, in the midst of a dry brown garden, blooming yellow with carefree abandon.  I suppose I can let this one pass.   It does, after all, contrast nicely with the blue Kansas sky.

Yellow Bird Grows

Well, the forsythia bloom got slaughtered sometime this winter, and my red-flowering peach was a bit of a dud this year, but for some unfathomable reason, the magnolias here all bloomed better than ever, not a hint of winter damage.  I can only conclude that at some critical moment during development, the buds of the former were blasted by a cold night, while the fuzzy plump magnolia buds just kept on ticking.  I know we had one night of -10ºF in December, but it seemed like a mild winter overall.  My roses, however, were also blasted back to the ground, even some of the hardiest.  Somewhere, either the winter dryness of the prairie or some extremely cold night was harder than usual on the plant material.

Anyway, as you can see from the photos, Magnolia 'Yellow Bird' has lifted my spirits for nearly two weeks and she continues to bloom today.  I thank my lucky stars for the day I snatched this up at a local nursery, pricey, but worth every penny for its weight in gold right now.  I'd been holding my breath for weeks, watching and waiting for these buds to shine free.

'Yellow Bird', which started out from a two foot tall twig, is now topping 6 feet tall.  This year her blooms came out before the foliage, so I didn't think she was quite as "showy" as she normally is when these blooms burst from the green foliage background, but she certainly didn't hold back her abundance.  Her appearance isn't helped by the wire cage she lives in, but I'm not about to let the deer damage her.  Someday she can rise above all this.

'Yellow Bird' is scented, but not as heavily as my other shrub magnolias, 'Ann' and 'Jane'.  I would describe the scent as a light citrus-y fragrance.  But, always the cynic, I wonder if I'm imagining it because the bright yellow blossoms remind me of lemons and are nearly as big?

Her bloom began this year around April 10th, opening quite a few at once when we had two warm days in succession as seen on the picture on the left, below.  She opened almost everything, a vast orgasmic display, by four days later when the picture on the right was taken.  People, I'm in love.

Tropical Surprises

I don't want to forget to relate that while I was communing with the art of tropical gardening during my time at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, I also learned a bit, ever the student thirsty for knowledge.  For one thing, I was fascinated by these large seed pods hanging from a trellis in the orchid room.  What were they, mangoes?  Some form of papaya?  There was no botanical marker that I could find at the base of the small tree they came from, so I finally had to search out a Marie Selby docent for the identification.

These, my friends are cocoa pods, just starting to ripen with the delicious seeds that will eventually become my favorite candies. I had seen them before, growing almost wild in Granada, but I had never seen them ripen.  Here, at last, is a reason to have a winter home in Florida; chocolate ready to pick off the tree!  Well, perhaps some processing would be involved, but still!   What will they think of next, vanilla from orchids?

Another surprise botanical treat on my visit was the finding, first, of bananas growing on an actual banana tree.  This bunch of bananas was badly beaten and broken down, but all the same they looked like they would someday be nourishing.  I was tempted to pick a fruit to compare tastes with the store-bought variety, but one never knows, these days, when a surveillance camera can be lurking and I don't need Homeland Security to open yet another file about me.

My largest botanical wonderment greeted me, however, from an adjacent tree; this incredible display of a banana flower ready to open and be fertilized so that the crown of ovaries above could bear fruit.  What a prehistoric feeling one gets while staring at this 8 inch long and plump blatant display of pure sexual reproduction brazenly free and open to the tropical air.  One glances behind oneself at a first glimpse and would not be surprised to see a Velocirapter creeping up to make a Mesozoic meal of modern man. What I'd give to be there now, a week later to see the flower open in all its musky splendor.

I had no idea, all these years of eating bananas, of the mechanics of the process.  Flower heavy and fecund, ovaries patiently presented for fertilization.  Once the world hits on a good pattern, it never lets go, eh?    

Resilent Regrowth

I've worried myself to distraction, this past month, concerned about the true costs of our April hailstorm on the garden.  The loss of a year's worth of irises, peonies, and non-remonant roses is disappointment enough, but what of other garden inhabitants?   In all the years I've gardened before now, I hadn't experienced hail that struck at the peak of spring, just as the garden year was beginning.  I knew that roses and irises and peonies would survive decrepit and tired, building sugars from damaged factories until they were reborn next year, but what about other plants?   If I grow tired of shredded iris leaves, I can always cut them off and force a rebirth, but gardens contain other lives that need to persist beyond a single cycle.

Foremost,  I wondered, what would become of the trees, the eternal trees, pummeled just as they opened their leaves, an entire year of stored energy wasted in seconds?  Garden experts wrote fleetingly about possible regrowth on trees and other plants, regrowth that seemed too dependent on this condition or that condition, but I could find little documentation for my comfort.  I wondered how the trees could possibly know if there was enough time left in the summer to try again or whether it would be better to save their resources for next spring?  But I offer these pictures, captured one month after the hailstorm, as encouragement to those searching after me.  For myself, they are lesson again that life can be both fragile and resilient in the same moment.




The first two photos above are of new growth on two different Maples in my yard, the first an "October Glory" Red Maple, the second a Paperbark Maple.  Both display their damage and regrowth at the same time, as do most of my trees that were so foolish as to get an early start on spring, hanging on to damaged leaves for sparse nourishment, but rebuilding with a vengeance.  The third photo is a Redbud, an understory tree, also exhibiting torn and shiny new leaves on the same branches.  Together, they are all evidence that this year is not a total loss, for me or for the trees.

In these lessons about hail, I also learned something about Darwinism and survival of the fittest.  The least damaged trees of all in my garden were the trees that are traditional Kansas natives.  My oaks, walnuts, and cottonwoods are all seemingly untouched, the first two because they kept their buds tight until well after the hailstorm and the latter because it seems that the bouncing poplar-like leaves of the cottonwood either dodged the hail stones or turned aside at the slightest touch, nimble as ninjas in the wind.  There are many lessons here that the Homo-sapiens-introduced maples can learn from.  The particular Homo sapiens also known as ProfessorRoush now understands again that despair is fleeting and hope is eternal.

Black Diamond Blush

Orange may be the new black, but ProfessorRoush believes black will always remain in style, nonetheless.  Women never go wrong with a simple basic black dress and pearls, and well-turned out gentlemen seldom look out of place in black suits and white shirts.  In contrast, black tulips and dark roses and chocolate zinnias are novelties craved by many gardeners, but I've never jumped on that bandwagon, myself.  Does black really ever belong in the garden?

I was excited, however, late in the season last year, when I found a number of Black Diamond Crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica) at the local Home Depot.  I had never seen or heard of these varieties before.   Crapemyrtles as a rule are only marginally hardy here, but I couldn't resist that dark foliage as an accent plant.  Several varieties were available, but I didn't like the combination of red flowers and dark foliage on 'Best Red' , nor the off-red shading of slightly lighter 'Crimson Red'.  I chose to try out 'Blush', a white-flowered variety that is technically a very light pink, but looked primarily white in the parking lot.

This spring, it was killed back to the ground (as were the rest of my crapemyrtles), but I left the spot untouched and, sure enough, in late May, a single dark stem arose that I babied and protected throughout the past few months until it began to bloom.  And here it is, stunning at last, the earliest of my crapemyrtles to bloom and the most noticeable.  Tell me, what do you think? An entire forest of Black Diamond 'Blush' might resemble a scene from a Tim Burton movie, but I'm pretty happy with it as an accent plant.  With a little more global warming, perhaps it won't kill back to the ground and I'll be able to see it get a little larger and more prominent each year.  Happily, it seems to be both drought-tolerant and able to withstand wet spring feet, and it has been unbothered by pests, both six- and four-legged in form.

There was a little bit of sleight of hand in the introduction of the Black Diamond series.  A little bit more research led me to the information that this commercially-offered series is the same as the Ebony series bred by Dr. Cecil Pounders and registered with the U.S. National Arboretum in 2013.  Black Diamond 'Blush' is the same plant as 'Ebony Glow'.  The breeding background of these plants are detailed in the HortScience article linked above.

Now, I think I'll watch for the new purple-flowered 2015 introduction, 'Purely Purple'.  The black foliage and purple flower combination of this new crape seems tailor made for a K-State oriented garden bed, don't you agree?

It's a Yellow Kind of Day

But, it's a good yellow kind of day.  I was stupendously cheered up last night when I noticed the first few blooms on 'Harison's Yellow' were open.  The recent rose massacre, both from winter and my culling of rose rosette-infected roses, has been dragging down my spirit in the garden, but now as the early roses come storming back, I'm feeling my strength return minute by minute.  Honestly, who could not look on the sunny yellow face of 'Harison's Yellow' and not be smitten by joy?  I'd normally caution you not to sniff this offspring of R. foetida too closely, but in the vicinity of this bush last night, all I could smell was its sweetness.  Perfection, thy name is 'Harison's Yellow'.  At least as long as I don't have to prune you or fight those vicious thorns to cut out deadwood!


My 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia also continues to bloom and please the dickens out of me.  I've got to tell you, the longer this tree is in my garden, the more impressed I am by its winter hardiness, drought resistance and stamina.  There are probably places in the country where it won't thrive, but I strongly recommend it for the Midwest.  It originally started out  for me 5 years ago as a 3 foot tall seedling, but it has now topped me in height and is 6 feet or better, finally outgrowing the top of its protected cage.  Additionally, the bloom period this year has been exceptionally long.  She started blooming this year around April 7th.   I took the picture on the left, below, on April 17th, just after I felt the tree was reaching its peak bloom and right after a rainstorm knocked off some petals.  Yet a week later, on April 24th as shown at the right, she is still blooming and just last night I was admiring the dozen remaining blossoms.  I apologize for the cage, but if you look closely towards the bottom of the tree, you'll notice the bare stems where the deer "pruned" the buds that were outside the woven-wire fence.  It's a necessity to protect this tree for a few more years.

 As I've said before, the "experts" seem to think the emerging green leaves distract from the beauty of the soft yellow flowers, but I disagree.  "Yellow Bird" has light green glossy leaves, which in my mind provide much needed contrast to the blooms and I greatly prefer this form to my bush magnolias who bloom earlier on bare stems.  "To each their own," as the saying goes.  Happily, "Yellow Bird" lives on in Kansas.

Pecan Plenty

In the midst of a hectic early November, I almost forgot to collect pecans from my young tree, but after driving over them a few times, I did eventually notice that they had fallen from the tree and were awaiting harvest. 

Of course, my epiphany came when I was rushing around doing other things and so I picked them up as rapidly as possible and filled my pockets.  The ultimate result was this previously picked, pocketed, and photographed pile of perfect pecans placed on ProfessorRoush's kitchen counter.  There are, for those who want to know, 83 pecans in this pile.

Last year, I gathered about a dozen pecans from the tree at harvest, the first year it ever bore fruit.  If my crop proliferates at the rate of 83/12, or 6.92X per year, then next year I should harvest 574 pecans, and the year after I should get 3975 pecans, and then 27500 pecans in 2016, and 190348 pecans in 2017. 

I think I'll stop counting after that since I'll literally be rolling in pecans.  Or I can just start counting pecans by the dump truck load after 2017.  Pecan paradise awaits.

Yellow Bird Lives

Yes, in answer to a reader's email, my 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia (Magnolia acuminata or Magnolia brooklynensis?)  still lives and bloomed again this year.  I was frightened for the display given our late unexpected snows and freezes this year, and I thought the last snow would knock off all the newly formed buds, but she still bloomed, although later and perhaps not quite as bountifully.  I think I can now attest to the hardiness of this tree here.  In the past three years she has withstood drought (albeit with a little extra water), early frosts, late freezes, and winter low temperatures of -10°F, and she has still grown and bloomed both years.  I think the high winds bother her the most, ripping the leaves a little here and there.


The 3rd picture below is an overall shot of the tree yesterday morning just after sunrise.  The peak bloom is already over as evidenced by the yellow petals on the ground, but some delicate flowers still remain to brighten my day.  Some have also asked why she is enclosed in a wire cage, and my simple answer is that I don't trust the large furry rats (deer) in my area. Those fuzzy plump buds look so inviting, I'm afraid that my baby will be nibbled to sticks if I leave her exposed.  And what they don't eat, the deer like to scour down to raw wood during rutting season.  So, caged she'll be until she gets branches above deer height.  She's grown about a foot each year since I purchased her.




Some garden experts and writers have written that Yellow Bird's flowers do not display well since they appear after the foliage, but I much prefer this arrangement to the "blooming on naked stems" look of my other magnolias. Blooming after the leaves open  protects the blooms from the late frosts!  The glossy yellow-green leaves of 'Yellow Bird' set off the flowers to perfection, in my opinion, and the experts will just have to suffer with the knowledge that they are wrong. 

They All Grow Up

Many years ago, when my daughter was perhaps six or so years of age, she returned from a late spring Manhattan Zoo outing and presented me, her hazel eyes sparkling with excitement, with a few maple seeds that she and her friend had collected from the sidewalk at the zoo.  Assuring me that these were special seeds from a marvelous and special tree, she demanded that I plant them immediately.  And I, acknowledging that they were magic seeds (made so merely by her efforts to please a gardening father), did indeed plant them with her help and direction, all the while thinking it unlikely that they would ever germinate and grow from the immature little samara that they were.

One blasted little seed did grow however, to my daughter's delight, and after finding a one-foot tall Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) seedling in a very poor place to allow further growth of a tree, I subsequently transplanted the sapling not once, but twice, all the while secretly hoping that the tree wouldn't survive the move(s).  It sounds terrible now, but this very common North American species with brittle wood and shallow roots was not high on the list of trees I wished to add to my landscape.

Evidently, however, God ignores pretentious gardening fathers and protects the dreams of stringy-blond-haired little girls because that maple has grown and thrived to become the largest tree of my yard, surpassing even the volunteer Cottonwoods that I have also allowed to mature.  At around 12 years of age, it is perhaps twenty feet tall with a trunk 6 or so inches in diameter, otherwise unremarkable except for its health and the mass of light yellow leaves that it drops for my lawnmower to pick up each Fall.

My daughter's maple surprised me this spring by setting seed for the first time, just as my little girl prepares to graduate High School, leave our nest and go off to college this summer.  ProfessorRoush, for all his deficiencies, is not so spiritually obtuse that he has missed this not-so-subtle cosmic hint about the nature of time.  Little gangly girls do grow up, despite the desires of their fathers, to become beautiful independent women, just as the tallest maple can grow from the smallest seed.  I get it, okay?




This tree will always be a part of my garden, serving forever to remind me of my young daughter and the seeds we planted, growing steadfastly and strong despite all the obstacles faced.  It has been with us through the Spring of young family life, the storms of adolescence, and it will soon serve to provide shelter and relief from the hot Kansas sun for an aging and reminiscing gardener.  Someday I hope that, long beyond my time, when this tree's time on Earth is over and being gauged in the number of growth rings, someone remembers to count the first dozen rings as I would, in the terms of memory.  This was the year she lost and regained her front teeth, this ring for the year the braces were removed, this one the first time she drove a car, this the year of her first teen love, this the year of her graduation....

PawPaw Possibilities

Down my eastern hillside, near the unmown prairie, I have a line of trees planted that has, through no planned vision of my own, become a sort of collection of tree oddities, at least of trees somewhat rare for Kansas.  These include a hawthorne, sourgum, bald cypress, two American persimmons planted only because my daughter likes persimmons (they're not old enough to bear fruit yet however), and a Common Pawpaw (Asimina triloba).  

The latter has had a rough life for a young tree.  It stands, right now, only about 3 feet tall, having been burnt early on in a fire and then, the next year, chewed down to a nubbin by marauding deer.  Still, it survived, and every year it puts out a few of those large, Cretaceous-era leaves to remind me that older and larger creatures once walked this earth.  And this year, imagine my surprise to see it bloom!  I didn't know Pawpaws bloomed, although any idiot amateur gardener like myself should realize that if they bear large banana-like fruit, they must bloom at some point.

PawPaw blossom

The bloom appearance, if you've never seen one, is quite unique, and I now understand the "triloba" species name, because the three-lobed calices of these flowers are quite distinctive.  These small muddy-purple flowers are thick-petaled, about the size of a dime, and would go unnoticed if you didn't look closely.  They appear, nestled next to the branch points, before the leaves have opened in the spring. Their flower faces are directed downwards and you have to practically lay on the ground to appreciate their structure (well, on a three-foot tall tree, anyway).  Look closely from a ground perspective, however, and you'll be amazed at the rich deep color of the petals and sepals, which surround a stiff wax-like receptacle and stamens.  I would recommend that you sample the fragrance of the flowers at your own risk, however, since the flowers have a musky odor that I will charitably describe here only as "yeasty."


In my ignorance about this tree, I had no intentions related to a higher environmental consciousness than hoping someday to taste its edible fruits, but in reading about the Pawpaw, I have since learned that it is the sole source of food for larvae of the Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus).  I've never seen one of these gorgeous butterflies, but as my Pawpaw grows, I'll be sure to leave any such larvae alone and to watch for the appearance of any errant migrants that make it this far west.  "If you build it, they will come" was the line from the movie Field of Dreams.  Well, maybe, just maybe, "if I grow it, they will come" works the same way for a gardener.

Pineing Away

I saw Greggo's recent beautiful sunrise picture and post about the recent marriage and move of his son shortly before my bluebird trail cleansing Sunday and while browsing onto parts of my land I don't see routinely, I happened across a large reminder of my own son.

This Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) was planted, as I recall, when my son was about a 4th grader, or about 14 years ago.  He came home excited from school with the gift of a small seedling tree for his father, provided to him during a demonstration by some local foresters at school.  When we planted it, down near the pond, it was approximately 4 inches tall and I protected it then, and still protect it, by mowing the tall grass around it every summer so that the lower branches don't catch fire during a Spring prairie burn.  The pine overlooks a small fishing dock that we built together and from which I used to watch him fish the small bass in the farm pond.  You could call this area and this pine my "memory bank" of my then young son. 

Now towering over 10 feet tall,  it is healthy as can be, either resistant to the pine wilt disease that has run rampant all over central Kansas in recent years, or more likely, just lucky.  Certainly, the disease incidence seems tied to drought and high summer temperatures and we've had enough of those lately to stress this one to the limit.  I knew about pine wilt even as I planted the tree with my enthusiastic son.  You would have thought that the foresters knew better in the late-90's than to give a bunch of kids a susceptible tree to plant, but I guess they didn't.  Most of the pines in Manhattan have died of the disease over the past decade, so perhaps the disease has passed my son's tree by and moved on without a reservoir of susceptible trees around.  I had hopes that its isolation, about a mile from landscaped Scotch pines in town, would save it from pine wilt and the associated Sawyer beetles and nematodes, but I was discouraged recently to read that pine wilt disease usually only attacks trees that are more than 10 years old.  So it is possible that I've protected this tree through childhood and young adulthood and I still might lose it soon.  Just when I thought we were beyond the danger.

I was surprised recently to see that the tree has  made it to puberty and now develops pine cones, as pictured at the left.  I'm hoping that the development of pine cones is not a sign, since the tree and my son seem to have matured at the same rate, that Mrs. ProfessorRoush's dreams of grandchildren are to be fulfilled anytime soon.  I'm happy to plant a few seemingly wilt-resistant Scotch pine offspring around, but this gardener is not ready for grandfatherhood.  I'm not nearly that old or cantankerous yet. 

Whence thou comest?

I realize that I was neglecting my garden in the past few weeks of heat, in favor of my own personal survival, but how, oh how, did I miss this stray mulberry seedling to the point that it got so big? I mean, talk about embarrassing. This one popped up in a hillside bed of purple-leaved honeysuckle so it was hardly inconspicuous as soon as it got taller than the honeysuckle mounds.  If I had let this errant creature get any bigger, I'd have had to hire a tree service to haul it off!

Every verdant area of the planet, I suppose, has a group of first colonizers, "weeds," and then a group of scraggly, undesirable weed trees that make way for the more stalwart forest citizens such as oak and beech.  In Kansas, the weed trees that pop up most often in my borders seem to be mulberries, red cedars, osage orange, and cottonwoods, although russian olive trees also lately seem to be frequently trying to gain a foothold.  Of the main four, I'm a sucker for our native cottonwoods, so I commonly transplant them somewhere where I can allow a large, rustling tree.  Red cedars are easy to spot because of their foliage differences from most of the plants in my deciduous borders, and I can't allow them to proliferate because I know that any untended land in Kansas quickly becomes a crappy red cedar forest if neglected.  Osage oranges usually announce themselves by stabbing me with their thorns when I pass, so they are often both easy to find and simultaneously provide me with sufficient motivation to remove them.  The mulberries, however (I believe these are native American red mulberries or Morus rubra), blend in somehow, the right color or the right shape, and my eye often misses their incursions until the sunlight is just right to set them off from the surrounding foliage.  There are two other mulberries in my garden right now, one that I keep forgetting to remove at the base of a mature 'Carefree Beauty' rose, and another hiding out among the blackberries, whose leaf shapes aid it in camouflage.  

Red mulberry saplings don't grow to be large or very useful trees, but I often think about letting a few grow on the periphery of my garden; for the birds, you see.  There are several wild ones growing down around the pond and around my acreage and I know they've got to be valuable resources for the wildlife, whatever I think of their messiness and lack of value to humans. Okay, I know some of you eat them, but the wild mulberries here lack any sufficient flavor for me to favor them. But I have a bigger problem than that with the idea of leaving mulberries to grow for birds.  Male and female flowers usually occur on different trees, so to transplant a fruiting tree to my landscape I have to let it grow tall enough to allow me to identify it.  And by that time it is so big that moving the chert rock to create a nice planting hole would seriously test my innate laziness.  The birds, I think, are just going to have to find their sustenance elsewhere in my garden, or fly down to the pond at suppertime.

(Ain't) Red Horse Chestnut

Consider this blog both a warning to the unwary enthusiastic gardener who is gullible enough to believe everything written about a plant, and as a plea to someone knowledgeable to please confirm that I at least got what I purchased(?).

Early in the last decade, I began to covet the pictures and descriptions of the Red Horse Chestnut (Aesculus carnea 'Briottii'), and decided that I must have one for my very own. I was probably mis-led by Wayside Garden's usual flowery description and embellished photography, but I was sure that this was a perfect tree for my landscape. If memory serves, I failed once with a bare-root specimen planted in Spring, but I was able to obtain a specimen planted at Thanksgiving in 2004 that has survived despite numerous prunings by roaming deer, who seem to love the early spring leaves as they unfold. These days, I keep it surrounded by wire in the early spring, as you can see in the picture below right, to deter the deer.

'Briotii' is the best known cultivar of the Red Horse Chestnut, also known as the "Ruby Red Horse Chestnut", and at maturity, it is supposed to make a rounded tree of 25-35 feet tall and in diameter. It is also supposed to be resistant to drought, heat and wind once established, and that, at least, seems to be true. However, the spring flowers are variously described as "rose-red" or "ruby-red", or "deep red" depending on where you read about them, but if they are really supposed to be red, then I've got a mislabeled cultivar. As you can see from the picture at the upper left, I think it would be generous to call these blooms pink. I might even argue that they are really a blush cream with pink overtones. I will admit that last year's pictures look a little more pink than this year's, so there may be some environmental effect on the bloom color. I suppose I should be satisfied with the pretty flowering of the plant, but I can't get past that I purchased it from a nursery with pictures showing a dark red bloom.

So, do I, or do I not, have the 'Briotti' that I intended to purchase? It certainly is not the Common Horse Chestnut which is undoubtedly more creamy yellow in bloom. And it seems to be similar to the 'Briotti' that I once saw in the Denver Botanical Gardens. I must learn to be satisfied with the "devil I have" rather than what I dreamed of. I just wanted to warn the rest of you not to expect more than you're getting.

For the sake of a good education, it's a horse chestnut if it is a Eurasian species, but North American species are "buckeyes". Since I grew up with native Buckeye trees in Indiana and had to deal with the pompous Buckeye's of Ohio State, I'm a little more comfortable with that term than with horse chestnut. I'm still not entirely sure, in fact, whether it should be "Horse Chestnut" or "Horsechestnut." I've also learned that British children play a game called "conkers" with horse chestnuts where the horse chestnut is on a string (a conker) and players take turns trying to break each other's conker by swinging at it. It's unethical, by the way, to harden your conker by baking it in vinegar or otherwise altering it. Alas, the game evidently cannot be played with buckeyes.  I was not taught it growing up in Indiana and Hoosiers can't play games with onomatopoeic names anyway. Too bad, because I missed out on competing in the World Conker championship (yes, there is one, and Ray Kellock and Wendy Bradford were the 2010 Men's and Women's champions). Never fear, fellow Hoosiers, the game is presently dying off because of growing Nannystate worries that children may be injured from conker shards during the game and because of concerns for participating nut-allergy sufferers.

What is the world coming to when protective equipment is required for a simple game of conkers?

UnRedBud Sport

Although I earn a living from K-State here in Manhattan, Kansas (not as a gardener), I have been remiss in not blogging more about the KSU Gardens, just right down the street from my work.  In fact, as a volunteer for care of the Ottoway Rose Garden there, I'm in the garden on a weekly basis and I should blog more about this growing botanical display garden and I will occasionally in the future. The KSU Gardens project, if you haven't yet heard about it, is a plan to complete an eventual 19-acre garden that doubles as a public resource to K-State and the surrounding community, and as a teaching laboratory for Horticulture students at the University.  It is funded primarily  by private donation, garden sponsorship, and through the work of a group known as the Friends of the KSU Garden. Phase II of the Garden project has begun, eventually expanding the current garden to double its size and moving some of the plant collections to more permanent homes.

My prompt for today's blog, however, was seeing the blooming tree pictured at the above right last week in the Gardens.  It is a non-commercial redbud sport found locally and given to the Gardens several years back by K-State Professor Emeritus, John Sjo.  It made a stunning display this year, the very light pink of the sport set off against the more normal Eastern redbuds that line the front of the old conservatory as it appears on the left side of the picture below.  The multistemmed nature of the tree makes a nice architecture point during the winter, but its flowers set it off from the garden during Spring.  The Garden's director is talking about cloning and commercially introducing the plant as 'Pink Sjo', which would seem to be an apt name.  I hope it comes to past because I'm drooling over a chance to have an offspring of this tree for my own garden.

Yellow Bird Magnolia

My "most awaited newcomer" has been teasing me for over a week now by performing a slow strip-tease, sepal by sepal, to expose her inner beauty.  And here it is, my much anticipated Magnolia acuminata 'Yellow Bird'.  Isn't she a beaut?  

Last year I attended a seminar at a locally-owned nursery, Blueville Nursery, which offered a 20% discount that night for EMG purchases and this small 3-foot specimen grabbed my eye.  Although a bit pricey, she screamed "but I'm 20% off!" at me and I took her home.  I've been stretching into the Magnolias over the past few years and I'd been looking for a yellow magnolia, perhaps Magnolia acuminata X M. denudata 'Butterflies', to become the third magnolia experiment in my garden.  I'd seen 'Butterflies' at another local nursery as a full-grown specimen and it is impressive when it wasn't frost damaged, but the yellow of 'Butterflies' is much paler than the single bloom that was present on 'Yellow Bird' when I bought it, so 'Yellow Bird' became my girl.

Now that she is blooming, I think 'Yellow Bird' is one of the most aptly-named plants I've ever seen.  Across the garden, even my small specimen looks like there are 8 or 10 canaries perched on the little tree, the 3 1/2 inch flowers exactly the right yellow to stand out from the surroundings.  'Yellow Bird' was bred in 1967 and is a 1981 Brooklyn Botanic Garden introduction that is hardy from zone 5-9.  She seems to have opened a week or two later than both my M. stellata and my 'Jane' magnolia, so I hope that she will give me a reliable bloom here in Zone 5b, unaccompanied by late frost damage in most years that we see on some magnolias here.  Certainly, she has survived her first year here, a dry winter, with "flying colors" (please pardon the pun, couldn't resist).  'Yellow Bird' has a substantial pedigree, descending from a cross between the American native Magnolia acuminata and the Chinese Magnolia lilliflora and then recrossed as an early Brooklynensis, Magnolia 'Evamaria' with M. I. subcordata.  In fact, some sources drop the Magnolia acuminata designation and simply list it as Magnolia x brooklynensis 'Yellow Bird'.  A mongrel she may be, but the intercontinental crosses have resulted in an exceptional and hardy beauty.  

I see that Monrovia has recommended 'Yellow Bird' paired with 'Blue Moon' Wisteria macrostachya.  As one of my wisterias is beginning blooming at another part of the garden, I can imagine how the blue-purple wisteria would climb up into 'Yellow Bird' and capture your soul.  I'm not about to chance this specimen to the choking vines of wisteria, though, so perhaps I'll have to justify another specimen in the garden somewhere.  Unlike the description on one website which stated that the flowers appear after the leaves and so can be lost amid them, , my 'Yellow Bird' has blooms only at this time, and the leaves are just beginning to open.  The same website also stated that it doesn't like dry conditions, that it likes acid soils, and that it might live only 8-10 years, so I hope that site is wrong on these latter counts as well.  Time will reveal the truth.

'Yellow Bird' is supposed to grow 35-40 feet fall and 25 feet wide at maturity, so I can't imagine what a specimen she is going to make in my garden when she reaches full growth.  She is labeled as a fast grower, so if I have some luck and practice good nutrition, and exercise, I might have a chance to live to see this tree fully grown someday, a little gem elevated into eye-popping maturity.

A Peachy Red

For me, warnings of the onset of Spring are manifest in the witch hazels, the daffodils, the minor bulbs, and the redbuds, but I finally feel Spring each year in my heart when my ornamental Double-flowering Red Peach (Prunus persica 'Rubroplena') blooms.

The red-blooming peach was introduced to Europe in 1840.  I first saw one over a decade ago when I saw one planted in a display garden at a local nursery (Lee Creek Garden).  A few years later I stumbled across a small 3 foot specimen at Lowes for the outrageous price of $50.00 and, of course, purchased it immediately and planted it in a prominent landscape spot.  Today, it stands about 12 feet tall and 10 feet across, blooming only for a short time, but, Oh what a display it makes!  Every year, it has made a good excuse to get my daughter to pose with her Italian Greyhound in front of it during bloom; the blooming of the growing teenager a foreground to the blooming and growing of the tree over a decade.

My 'Rubroplena' started to bloom just 2 days ago and was fully open last night.  Although Internet references report that this tree is "long-blooming" for 2 weeks, I've always found the blooms fleeting and with the wind of last night's onrushing storm already knocking off blossoms to the ground, I quickly snapped this year's picture.  Blown up, it is just blurry enough that you can see the wind was moving it even during the photo, but for overall landscape value, this tree is a peach.

I've learned that in purchasing 'Rubroplena', I may have purchased the plainest red peach on the market and that there are other named varieties out there.  'Late Red' sounds like a good one for those in Zone 6 or higher to avoid late freezes, and 'Red Baron' is a double-blooming variety that is supposed to also provide edible peaches, unlike my 'Rubroplena' whose peaches are small, hard, and bitter.  Even harder to resist is finding that there is a weeping double red flowering peach tree on the market, but again, it is only recommended for Zone 6 or above so I think I can resist the temptation to throw money and plant tissue down the drain in a fruitless effort.  I fear I'm about to begin a search, however, for a commercial source of a cultivar named 'Versicolor', which supposedly bears semi-double white and red-striped flowers on the same tree.  Zone-hardiness doesn't count when a quest of such beauty commences.

For those who would like to try 'Rubroplena', it seems to be perfectly hardy here in Zone 5B and it has never missed a bloom despite freeze or frost.  Calling it "red" is really a bit of a stretch as I would have called it more of a deep pink, but there is no reason to disparage the blooms for our color mischaracterizations.  Leaf curl doesn't seem to affect it, at least to a noticeable degree, and thus I don't spray this tree when I spray "the eating" peaches.  I have trimmed it only to shape the tree and keep it from rubbing against the house.  If it has a drawback, it is that the hard fruits drop off in late fall and early spring and may be a bit dangerous to foot traffic if placed near a walkway.  I ignore the fruits entirely, but it is possible the birds enjoy them because I now have another 'Rubroplena' that sprouted on its own over 200 feet from the first.  Of course, I kept the gift from the sky and planted another garden bed around it. 

Redbud Ruminations

A native Spring stalwart, the Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) began to bloom here in the Flint Hills just yesterday.  I was beginning to be afraid this day might not arrive this year, it felt so late, but I was fretting under a false assumption.

See, this is why you keep records.  As I've written before and as a general rule, I'm pretty terrible about keeping records, but redbud first bloom dates are perhaps my one exception to the rule.  And I thought this year was pretty late, now the second week of April, for the redbuds to start blooming.  But a check of my notes informs me that I'm not only wrong, I'm dead wrong.  In six of the past 8 years, the redbud outside our laundry window first bloomed from 4/10 to 4/24.  In the "unordinary" years 2007 and 2009, the weather was askew and things were obviously out of whack.  In 2007, my redbud bloomed early on 3/31/07 after a warm Spring, but then we got hit by the terrible black freeze of mid-April so the redbud was perhaps the only thing that did bloom that spring.  And in 2009, we had 3 inches of snow and sleet on March 28th, and according to my notes, my redbud didn't bloom at all that year, probably due to that late storm damage.  Of course, it's possible that I've slipped into this parallel Universe from one where my memory is correct and redbud trees do bloom earlier in Kansas, but since the written records correspond to this current Universe, how would I know?  How many redbuds can dance on the head of a pin?   

I'm always jumping the garden gun and starting Spring yard work a mite early, so the key lesson here is probably to learn some patience.  I should rejoice, I guess, that my redbud has waited till now to bloom, because it probably means we've had a normal pace of spring and the garden will be better for it.  But I should also confess that I'm not especially fond of redbud trees.  I've never been able to cozy up and embrace the fuchsia-pink color of the native redbuds, so I use them as an indicator of the beginning of the garden season and when to have put the crabgrass preventer on the lawn, but I don't crave their color as I do my red peach tree.  Perhaps I should have chosen one of the named cultivars such as 'Forest Pansy' or 'Pinkbud'?  

 After seeing a stunning example from another local gardener, I will admit that I started a redbud grove beneath a cottonwood tree using several volunteer redbuds to make an understory group at the back of my garden.  And I know some of you are asking why, if I'm not partial to redbud trees, I have one growing as a specimen tree right outside our laundry room window and back door, but the reason for that contradiction is simple.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush loves redbud trees.  And so I planted it, the first tree beside the new house, where she'll get the most pleasure out of it.  Take it from me, fellow husband-gardeners, redbud trees do not have a "manly" color, but planting that tree in your garden will pay dividends every year. 

A-Pear-antly Popular

As I drove to work this morning down from the highest point in Manhattan (a small hill called "Top of the World" overlooking the river valley the city sets in), I was suddenly struck by a vista of endless white trees sticking up over and around the roofs of all the houses.  Manhattan in Spring, it seems, is a monoculture sea of spring-flowering trees that makes it appear as if the very city itself was drowning in a tub of foamy soap bubbles.

I blame this sensory overload on the local landscapers, professional and amateur, who were planting 'Bradford' pear trees (Pyrus calleryana) ad infinitum twenty years back, and who, when Bradfords proved too weak for the Kansas winds, turned to the stronger 'Chanticleer' pear trees, or 'Snowdrift' and "Spring Snow' crabapples. You would think that in an area where Eastern Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) grow as a native understory tree there might be more use made of them in the landscape.  You would think that landscapers could choose randomly from a number of KSU-recommended crabapples, many of which happen to be something other than white (such as pink 'PrairieFire' or magenta 'Radiant').  There are pink-flowering ornamental peach trees, pink cherry trees, scarlet Hawthorns, dogwoods, and even a few purplish or yellow Magnolias that will survive here.  In contrast, I know of only a few tree-size Magnolias that survive in town, all of them white.

I don't have anything particularly against planting white-flowering trees.  My rebellious nature kicks in when white is the only choice and when the planted trees all bloom white and simultaneously.  Landscape architects are seemingly as bad in this regard as they are in using purple barberry and 'Stella de Oro' daylilies to excess.  Have they no imagination?

In my own yard, I could actually use a few more white-flowering trees.  I've got a 'Royalty' purple-pink crab, a pink 'Red Barron' crab, a 'PrairieFire' crab, a red peach, a Scarlet Hawthorne, and a bright yellow Magnolia (to be featured in a few days) that all are blooming now or will bloom soon.  My only currently-blooming white trees are an honest-to-god fruiting apricot tree and a Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata).  Neither of the latter really matter as white trees because orchard trees don't count and the Magnolia stellata is still too short to see.  Maybe someday I'll fall into lockstep with the herd, but for now, I'm just going to keep being a pink blight on the white horizon.

Witch Hazel Kool-aid

One of my many, many pet gardening peeves (which should be differentiated from the many pets that peeve me in my garden), is the manner in which the fiendish ghouls who create plant catalogues enlarge and enhance an otherwise insignificant flower until the catalogue reader (i.e. the gardener) is compelled to grasp frantically for the phone and credit card and purchase a dozen for their garden. Every Midwestern gardener who has ever drooled over a plant catalogue in the depths of a cold, snowy Winter could name at least one, if not several, horticultural mail-order firms that are notorious for the practice. Closeup, voluptuous pictures of Hybrid Tea roses are moderately tolerable, but the act of magnifying tiny asters or honeysuckle until  the gardener feels that he or she could utilize the flower as a scented and comfortable spare bedroom just isn't fair.  Heck, even the surface of male bovine manure looks interesting when viewed at a microscopic level, but it is still male bovine manure when viewed in normal size.

 I give you, as evidence of my dissatisfaction, the Witch Hazel. Witch Hazels are hailed as the first blooms of Spring in many areas, flowering boldly on leafless stems in late winter. Each flower has four slender strap-like petals that are always pictured everywhere as the most glorious, showy flower in all of Creation. Every gardener just has to grow one in our gardens, right?  Especially those gardeners who haven't seen anything but mist and snow and ice for the past three months?  For years, I indulged in the fantasy of adding one of these scented beauties to my garden so that I could advance Spring forward into Winter and enjoy the simple beauty of natural flowers without resorting to artificially forcing bulbs or flowering shrubs. Pictures such as that at the left drew me in; enormous, frilly, impossibly delicate, bright blooms that look as if they would cover your hand. I was told time and again that Witch Hazels were difficult to grow in Kansas, and in support of that wisdom, I admit that I have yet to find a surviving specimen in a public garden in this area.  But I couldn't call myself a gardener if I didn't at least try.  In fact, I failed the first time I attempted to overwinter an expensive specimen, but I'm now into my fourth year of survival of a 'Jelena' (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'), and I couldn't be more disappointed at the reality of the bush.

  

Garden writers are no better than garden photographers in describing that reality for us.  The late Henry Mitchell, in One Man's Garden, stated "Nothing equals the hybrid Asian witch hazels for delight in late January-February-early March, depending on the weather....Usually, as in the variety called 'Jelena', they are orange-bronze in effect and surprisingly showy."  Showy?  I, for one, loved Henry Mitchell's writing and use of language, but he failed me this time. If you, the reader, will think back really hard, you'll realize that you have never seen an entire, whole Witch Hazel bush pictured in bloom in a book. They are pictured in toto only as an example of nice fall foliage color. The real reason the blooms are always pictured in closeup is that in reality they are only 1-2 cm long and are practically invisible from 3 feet away regardless of the bright color. The same flower, without cropping and enlargement, actually is better represented by the picture at the right, a sad and impossible standard to worship, even for a winter-starved gardener.  If one has to use a magnifying glass to view a flower in the garden, the overall landscape benefits of the plant are dubious, at best. 

So, I don't know how many of you grow Witch Hazel and would agree with me, or how many have swallowed the Kool-aid whole and feel that I'm just a crotchety old gardener who expects too much and gripes too loudly.  But I submit to you that if we are all being truthful with one another, we would admit that Witch Hazel wouldn't be worth growing if it bloomed in June instead of February.  And in full disclosure, I am suspicious that my Witch Hazel is not actually 'Jelena'.  The blooms of my bush are more yellow than other pictures I've seen of the variety, and up till now the fall foliage has been uninspiring.  The most likely explanation is that I was sold a mislabeled plant and didn't obtain the variety I sought.   Which brings up another pet peeve.....

October Glory Survives!

While the fall colors have generally been disappointing in the Flint Hills this year, I had held out hope for my October Glory Maple (it was so spectacular last year!).  Alas, it too is lacking some of its normal vibrant red tones in this long warm fall, although the leaves still look pretty darned good against the clear Kansas sky.

I should be happy though, about this tree's continued survival amidst my rocky soil and the past summer's drought.  I planted this beauty in 2007, and as you can see from the pictures at planting time, chiseling out a hole from the loose flint took some effort and resulted in a pile of flint chips that rivaled the tree's root ball.  I wanted it in the front yard, high near the house, so it could be a flaming beacon seen for a long way away when fall comes, but the soil on the top of these hills is a bit sparse.  The local Extension Horticulture agent and I have a bet as to the ultimate survival of the tree, but so far, it seems to be holding its own, having grown about a foot in each of its three years in my yard.

Acer rubrum 'October Glory' is a rapid growing Red Maple cultivar with one of the best fall displays of red leaves in commonly available cultivars.  As advertised, it holds its leaves longer than most other trees, and as I look now across my yard, it is currently the only tree out there with a full compliment of leaves, except for the dull brown Bald Cypress and my tiny Scarlet Oak out back.  It grows with a nice globular form, ultimately stretching 40'-50' high with a 25'-35' spread.  Although it is said to prefer slightly acid and moist conditions, it seems to grow fine on my alkaline, dry prairie. 

One never thinks of a maple tree as being lethal, but as a veterinarian I was interested during my research to learn that the dead or wilted leaves of red maple are extremely toxic to horses, with ingestion of three pounds considered lethal.  I don't treat horses anymore, but I'd better file that one away and make sure I don't put my compost pile near the north fence lines where my neighbor pastures horses.